


Wildwood Flower

by leobrat



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-02-27 20:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2704778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leobrat/pseuds/leobrat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end and the beginning, and everything in between. Beth Greene was born and then lived her entire life. Daryl Dixon lit a match and watched the world go down in flames. CONTAINS SPOILERS UP THROUGH 5.08, CODA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All Portion Of Love Had All Blown Away

**Author's Note:**

> THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS UP THROUGH EPISODE 5.08, _CODA_.
> 
> My first Walking Dead fic. I was massively inspired (enraged, in despair, whatever) by 5.08, _Coda_ , and this came out in a fit of emotion today. There will be a few installments, probably at least five and we will see how much I lose myself as I try to process Beth Greene's death. I'm expecting this to go pretty dark, just warning you, and that's probably not a surprise. Rated 'T' for now, but definitely expecting that to go up.
> 
> Lyrics from June Carter's _Wildwood Flower_ , title from the same.

"Is Mama in Heaven now?”

 

It was just before dawn, and the house had been quiet, still. The past few weeks, it seemed that Beth could always hear the faint, wheezy breath from her mama’s sickbed, but that was gone, and her father was holding his beloved wife’s hand, sitting next to her on the bed. He was crying without sound. Hershel Greene looked up when he heard his youngest’s voice, struggling in his mind how to explain death to a four-year-old.

 

“Yeah, doodlebug, Mama’s in Heaven now,” he finally said, and Beth padded across the room in her nightgown and bare feet and climbed up into her father’s lap. She let him cuddle into her and looked down at her mama in the bed. She looked like she was sleeping, but her hands were cold when Beth reached out to touch her fingers.

 

“That’s good, Daddy,” Beth said to him, and he looked back at her, curious. “She was hurting, Daddy. She’s not now.”

 

“Oh, Bethy.” Hershel kissed the top of her head, and pulled her close again.

 

They buried her mama three days later, Beth held in her father’s arms while Maggie leaned against him, trying not to cry. The sky was blue and the sun was shining and Mama was buried under her favorite tree.

 

*

 

Daryl had barely been more than an animal since he carried Beth out of the hospital. Not a word to anyone, hardly a grunt if anyone tried to talk to him. Two days later, a dozen or so walkers came upon them on the trail and almost before anyone else could get to their weapons, Daryl had laid waste to six of them. Hadn’t even touched his crossbow, he tore them apart with his bare hands. After a moment, Rick pulled Abraham back from trying to help him, just let him rip through the rotting corpses, all savage cries and inhuman wails. Afterwards, he didn’t even wipe the blood off of himself.

 

He almost refused to let Rick take her from his arms to lay her in the ground. And when they started shoveling dirt over her, he jumped back into the hole, throwing himself over the body covered in one of the blankets on the firetruck. Carol pleaded with him, he didn’t even hear her. Eventually Tyreese had to knock him out, and she was buried when he came to. Tyreese haltingly tried to apologize, bracing himself for the punch he was sure was coming, but Daryl just sat down on top of the unsettled dirt, fixing the crude cross as best he could.

 

“We’ve got to move on,” Glenn insisted to Rick.

 

“We can’t leave him,” Rick answered. But he was anxious- he couldn’t stay on the side of the road, just outside of Atlanta with his two children indefinitely.

 

“But he won’t leave her,” Carol broke in. “Something’s got to give.”

 

*

 

Maggie didn’t like Annette, and she told Beth that she wouldn’t let Daddy marry her, but he did anyway, and moved her and her boy into the farm house. Maggie would take off on one of the horses and be gone all day. Beth tried to follow her at first, but Maggie told her she was too little and she didn’t want a kid following after her. And Beth thought Annette was nice.

 

Shawn was full of mischief. Soon enough, he was fast friends with Maggie and the two of them would be running off from the house, partners in crime on how they would break their parents up, even though to Beth it seemed like it was too far gone for them to try.

 

Annette changed some things around the house- fancier curtains in the sitting room, there were fresh flowers on the kitchen table every day and the fine layer of dust that usually covered a widowed father’s house disappeared almost overnight. And Annette brought with her an old upright piano, slightly battered on the sides but the keys still rang bright and true.

 

“Do you play?” Beth asked her, one day when it was just the two of them in the house.

 

“Yes, I do,” Annette answered her proudly. She was a smiley woman. Redheads seemed to be made for smiling. “I can teach you, if you’d like.”

 

Beth smiled and sat down at the bench. Annette put away the last dish she’d been drying and sat next to her. The first song she learned to played was ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ and then, an old June Carter song.

 

_Oh, I’ll twine with my mingles and raven black hair_

_With the roses so red and the lilies so fair_

_And the myrtles so bright with the emerald dew_

_The pale and the leader and eyes look like blue_

 

*

 

Rick tried to talk to him first. He didn’t get it, at first, but quickly caught on. After all, he’d been there. And he made the mistake of saying that to him.

 

“I get it,” Rick said softly, like he was talking to Judith, or a kicked pup. “You were out there together- you fell in love with her.”

 

Daryl stared straight ahead, not acknowledging him in any way.

 

“I get it,” Rick repeated, more firmly.

 

“So.” Rick had to double-take that Daryl responded, soft and brief though it was. But he shook his hair out of his eyes and looked at him, for the first time in days. “So?” Wasn’t much but Rick hadn’t been expecting Daryl to just open right up either. He breathed a sigh of relief that he was making some headway.

 

“Brother, I’m just trying to say...I get where you’re coming from, I been there too-” Rick reached out to put a hand to his shoulder and Daryl flinched away, with a snarl, back to the skittish pup.

 

“You get _shit_ , Rick,” he growled, and his fingers tensed, balled into fists. “You got two kids, you got a wedding ring on your finger- you get _shit_. And me...I just got a dead girl. Never gonna see her again.” Rick choked back a reply on that when he saw Daryl looking down at the tiny, insignificant grave. No one knew where the hell they were. They were never coming back here.

 

Never gonna see her again.

 

*

 

Seasons changed on the farm, leaves fell, crops grew, animals had new babies, and they all grew up. Maggie was pretty and sassy, Shawn was tall and never afraid to show off, and Beth was still the little one. Annette had made them all family though, early enough and even Maggie called her _Mom_ now. And Daddy would watch them all from the corner, in his chair, smiling at Beth when she’d sing with Annette in the cool, dark nights on the farm.

 

When Maggie packed up for college, she hugged Beth tight around the shoulders, pulling her in and ruffling the top of her hair. “Aw kiddo, don’t be sad,” she laughed. “I’ll be home for Thanksgiving before you know it. Hey look, I got you something.” It was a framed photo of them at Christmas time, Beth must have been two. They were wearing matching velvet dresses, Beth in red and Maggie in green. Maggie was scowling (such a little tomboy, she hated being in tights) but Beth was smiling full on, so proud to be dressed up like her big sister.

 

“You sure you don’t want to take this? To remember us all?” Beth laughed, tracing the photo with her fingertips. Nobody ever got that she and Maggie were sisters when they first met folks. In fact, Beth didn’t fit in at all with her family in photos. Annette and Shawn were the same, with auburn hair and freckles, and everyone who knew her was always telling Maggie how much she looked like their mama, but tiny little blond Bethy was the sore thumb.

 

Maggie reached out a hand and tucked a golden strand behind Beth’s ear. “Never gonna forget my baby sister, my family.”

 

Shawn drove up with Maggie- he was a big sucker for sixteen, and Beth knew he planned to use it to his full advantage on orientation weekend, he wasn’t just there for the heavy lifting. Beth watched them both go, watched until dust settled down the long dirt driveway and turned back to her dad in his rocking chair on the porch. “I miss her already,” he said, unashamed tears clouding his old blue eyes. “Thank God I still got you, Bethy. For a little while anyway.”

 

“You’ll always have me, Daddy.” She smiled tenderly at him even as she thought of far-off places and adventures, just a few interminable years away. 

 

Hershel asked if she would sing for him and she started in on ‘Danny Boy’, knowing he liked the old Irish traditionals. Annette joined in harmony from the house.

 

*

 

By the fifth day, Maggie’d had it (so had almost everyone else). “Daryl, we need to _move on,_ ” she hissed at him. He was still laying on Beth’s makeshift grave. He slept there, he hardly ever moved. Hadn’t eaten and barely had a sip to drink. “Daryl, are you listening to me?” She prodded him with her foot, and still got no response. “You’re not the only one who lost someone here,” her voice took on an accusatory edge, and Daryl looked up at her but that was it.

 

Carol knelt next to him, and didn’t move to touch him. That hadn’t gotten anyone anywhere. “Daryl, it’s not safe here, especially for Judith,” she tried to appeal to his sense of protectiveness. He’d bonded with Judith the first time he’d held her. Carol offered a small smile. “That’s not Beth in the ground. You’re not doing her any good here. And neither are we.”

 

“So leave me.”

 

“Daryl-”

 

“Leave me!” He pushed himself up, one side of his face caked with dirt.

 

Carol searched in his eyes- she remembered being back on the farm, Lori telling her in hushed whispers what had happened when she and Maggie found Beth in the bathroom, her wrist cut to shreds. _But she wanted to live,_ Lori had said, full of relief. _She made her choice- she wants this._

 

Carol reached out both hands to cradle his face, this big man-child who might be the dearest friend she would ever know. He made his choice, too. 

 

*

 

Jimmy was one of Shawn’s best friends, a year younger than him and two years older than Beth. When he’d asked her for the last slow dance at th end-of-school semi-formal, she had felt like the most special girl in the world. He gave her her first kiss that night, little sparks shooting off in her mind. It was a little messy, and not quite what she expected, but she was grinning when dropped her off on her front porch. The next week, he took her to the movies and her daddy hugged her tightly before she left the house in her jean skirt and favorite, faded cowboy boots, cast-offs of Maggie’s. 

 

*

 

He was alone. Finally. 

 

Maggie and Glenn had pleaded with him right up until the end. Carol hadn’t said a word but watched him over her shoulder until she was out of sight. Carl cried. Daryl was silent and still.

 

There were no sounds that night- no rustle of walkers in the dark, no owls, not even any breeze. 

 

Just that soft, peaceful voice in his mind.

 

“God damn, Be...Be…” he choked trying to say that name, gargled out a sob. “God damn.”

 

_Oh, he taught me to love him and promised to love_

_And to cherish me over all others above_

_How my heart is now wondering no misery can tell_

_He’s left me no warning, no words of farewell_

 

“Beth!”

 

She kept singing.

 

*

 

One week, there was a strange advisory on the news, warning people of possible rabid animal attacks, though local officials couldn’t quite make up their minds or agree if that was for sure what was happening.

 

The week after that, even though people still weren’t sure what was going on, all were in agreement that it was definitely _not_ animal attacks.

 

The weeks after that were a haze as everything fell apart. Beth stopped going to school (her father begged her to not even set foot out of the house), Maggie tore home from college in a panic and they all cried and cried as they held each other. She hadn’t answered her cell phone in two days and nobody wanted to voice any fears on what might have happened. One night Jimmy ran through their yard barefoot and crying and his own parents were chasing him, eyes grey in their sockets, groaning and hissing. 

 

Otis and Shawn thought quick and shoved them into the barn. And while Mom and Patricia frantically checked them over for scratches and bites, Daddy made a decision. “Leave them in there. Don’t tell anyone. Find anyone you can- I need to try to help.”

 

Beth never loved or was more afraid of her daddy in that moment. Daddy delivered puppies and still called her Doodlebug like she was four years old. This was judgment day. Not work for one man.

 

One night, when Shawn hadn’t come back from his chores, Beth tried to find him. It was getting dark and as little as they knew in those days, they knew that dark was worse. When she found him, he was kneeling on the far side of the barn, and before she called out to him, she heard that telltale groans and then, Annette was by her side. “No,” she said, her face white as a sheet. “No, _not_ my boy!” 

 

“Mom!” Beth screamed, but Annette had fallen forward and Shawn was on his mother, not paying Beth any mind at all. The screams brought everyone down from the house and Otis quickly got them in the barn. He thought quickly on his feet, always did. Daddy fell right in the dirt and didn’t move for the rest of the night.

 

They picked themselves up, Daddy more convinced and frantic than ever that something could be done as he pored over any old biology book he had. Jimmy fell into work on the farm, doing anything he could to help Otis, and Beth, Maggie and Patricia took care of things like they always did. Jimmy seemed less like her boyfriend these days- she guessed that Judgment Day had a way of putting things in perspective. She found she didn’t miss kissing him so much, but was glad he was there, all the same.

 

But when Beth had to go near the barn, she would press her hand on the door. “Can you hear me, Mom?” Groans and pounding at the door answered her, as the wretched creatures inside sensed something fresh, and alive.

 

“Mom,” Beth whispered, and closed her eyes, remembering a brunette beauty lying peacefully in clean white sheets in a little bedroom in the house. “ _Mama._ ”

 

She sat in the dirt and leaned her head back against the door and sang.

 

_Oh, he taught me to love him and called me his flower_

_That was bloomin’ to cheer him through life’s dreary hour_

_How I long to see him and regret the hour_

_He’s gone and neglected his pale wildwood flower_


	2. Still All My Song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to keep writing this, mostly as catharsis for myself. I haven't been so caught up in a story in years, and I'm just going with the flow. This is my way of 'fixing it', for myself. But I will just say that this story is NOT about Daryl healing. Just so we're clear. But it also will not be Daryl just sitting in the dirt for the entire story. He'll be moving along soon, I just don't think he's done with his despair yet. (If I'm not, why should he be?)
> 
> Many thanks for the response on this, it really has touched me.

Life on the farm went on much in the same way it always did. Except Maggie stopped yammering on about the goings-on at school and Beth didn’t play the piano at night. Jimmy and Otis worked on the fences day after day, making sure they were strong and nothing could get in without them knowing about it, and every so often, their phone would ring, one of the neighbors looking for Daddy. But it weren’t for sick horses or sheep any more. Somehow folks had gotten wind that Daddy knew how to take care of the things- at least that’s what people probably thought. But then the phones stopped ringing (stopped working altogether), and they were the last people on earth, as far as Beth knew.

 

At first, Daddy had worried and fretted and came up with different plans with Otis for how they could deliver the people needing treatment to whatever medical facility they were sure was gonna be coming by. The National Guard, the Marines...someone, somewhere had to be fixing something. After a while, they stopped with those plans. Otis still crowded more of the afflicted (Daddy’s term) into the barn. 

 

Patricia showed Beth how to break chicken’s legs to throw them in for feed. 

 

“Can’t we just kill them?” Beth winced when she heard the sickening cracks, and the hen’s pitiful squawks.

 

Patricia swallowed, square-jawed. She and Otis had been working at the farm since Beth was little, since before Annette had moved in. She’d been the one to talk to Maggie when she got her first period, and she baked Christmas cookies with the girls when they were little. And she’d always been there to give a good dose of no-nonsense, Southern mothering when they’d needed it. Beth was always sad that she and Otis hadn’t had babies of their own- theyd’ve been so good at it.

 

Patricia shook her head at Beth. “No, your daddy said they got to eat something alive.” Beth didn’t wince this time, but the statement went off like a gunshot in her head. Her daddy, who treated every animal on God’s green earth with such tender care, who had once found a ringleader in a house for dogfights and beat him with a shovel (Maggie told her the story, which their dad didn’t know she knew about), had instructed them on how pull legs off chickens. It was a new world, and Beth didn’t see any end in sight.

 

They all went on, did their jobs, and one day, a man came screaming through their field cradling a bloody boy.

 

* 

 

Daryl slept, woke up, and didn’t move. He pressed his hand to the ground, trying to reach the girl below. _Dead girl._ Rick had left him with some water and food, mostly still untouched. He honestly didn’t give a shit anymore if he lived. All he’d worked towards, any purpose he’d felt was just gone, and it was hard to believe he’d ever felt anything other than emptiness.

 

But he was afraid to die. He didn’t know what would happen to him, if there would be anything at all. So he sat over her grave and waited, as close to her as he could get.

 

*

 

They buried Otis near where her own mama was buried. After the ‘service’ (if anyone could call it that, but it did seem to make Patricia feel a tiny bit better when that man spoke about Otis dying to save a hurt child), Beth waited til everyone was gone and sat down on her mama’s grave.

 

This world was spinning too fast into some horror novel, and she didn’t know how to catch up. 

 

The parents of the little boy, Rick and Lori, moved their whole extended family onto the farm and they set up tents on the back lawn like it was a big camping trip.

 

“Don’t say a word,” Daddy whispered to Beth and Maggie. “That boy needs to heal up and they’re looking for a little lost girl and then they are gone. They been on the road a long time, and they’re down on their luck. We can help. But they don’t know what we’re doing here. They’re not part of it.”

 

Daddy always said that they all had jobs to do- Daddy was going to make the dead live again, and Beth could only watch.

 

These new folks moved in all over, the women joining in the kitchen like they were all old neighbors, some of the men helping on the fences (taking over where Otis left off) and that boy Glenn kept going off with Maggie to cipher supplies from in town. Beth stayed close to Patricia, and watched them all. She looked in on the little shot boy and sang to him. He was such a tiny thing, his parents worried to the point of madness. His father had almost killed himself trying to give back to save his son. She couldn’t imagine that poor little girl lost out there, with no one to look after her. They didn’t give up though. Someone was out every single day looking for her.

 

Jimmy wanted to join in the search- Beth guessed he’d had enough of Daddy’s rules, and needed to blow off some steam with some other men. “Stay away from them, Bethy,” her dad warned her. And so she did.

 

*

 

It was days before walkers disturbed his vigil. Daryl almost breathed a sigh of relief when he heard the familiar groans. His hand was on his crossbow but he didn’t move it in position.

 

It was still pretty far off down the road, and he thought about just letting it come. Let him become a monster. Let it be over. Rick, Carol, Judith, they were all gone. No one would ever come looking for him again, there was no real point. His only company had been her voice, drifting in and out of the recesses of his mind, songs he remembered from firesides and sung quietly in his ear, when they were the only two people in the world. And then he heard sharp, clear laughter, that was all joy and no mocking.

 

_Daryl, go back. You should go back._

 

*

 

The house wasn’t quiet any more, Beth could always hear comings and goings, from the moment she woke up in the morning. Patricia, Lori and Carol bustling about the kitchen, getting things ready for the day. Shane teaching the whole group how to use guns off in the far-off fields (even Patricia had gone with her, it was becoming more important to everyone to know how to protect what they had). Sometimes she could hear Carl laughing as he rubbed down the horses and fed the chickens. That was a sweet sound.

 

Beth had gone up to her room to change clothes after working in the yard and for the first time in a long time, looked up and around at the room she lived in for her entire life. None of the furniture had changed since her daddy switched out her crib for the twin bed she slept on now. But everything she had added over the years to make it hers- her guitar sitting silently in the corner, her journal on the bedside table, pictures of lady bugs she drew, the old record player Daddy found for her in a yard sale, and everything she ever found that she thought was beautiful (Mom would cluck her tongue and call her a packrat) was stashed and pinned everywhere. It had been months since she’d looked at any of it- it felt more like a lifetime.

 

She stopped in front of the picture of her and Maggie at Christmas, in their matching dresses, and as if on cue, her big sister slid up behind her, knocking softly on the door frame. “Hey kiddo,” she said softly, and Beth knew she had something to say.

 

“I don’t want us to fade away, Maggie,” Beth said, looking back up at the picture. “Like, who we really are. I want to stay us.”

 

Maggie hugged her sides, and Beth could see that her eyes were red. “Bethy, they found the barn.”

 

Beth sucked in a deep breath. “What are they gonna do?” At this, Maggie looked down, and Beth cringed when she heard th childlike pleading in her own voice. “No Maggie, they’re gonna kill them?”

 

“Kiddo, they’re _dead,_ ” Maggie came forward, reaching for her sister with both arms, but Beth jerked back.

 

“Don’t say that, that is our _mother_ you’re talking about, Daddy’s going to make it okay-”

 

There was shouting downstairs now, angry voices talking over one another, and both girls quieted, squared off against one another.

 

“Let Daddy handle this,” Maggie said quietly. “Bethy, it’s going to be okay.”

Maggie’s words rang in her ear while Rick and Shane (and more?) pulled her off of her mom, snarling and snapping at her and clawing to eat her alive. “ _Mom,_ ” she cried. People were shouting over her, swinging scythes and stomping out soft, rotted skulls and she cried again. “ _Mom._ ”


	3. A Conversation With Death

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the shorter update, and many thanks to everyone who has read and commented. Input is quite welcome! It's been a long time since I wrote fic, and this is a journey for me, sort of relearning my process and finetuning some rusty skills. I must thank kadie_darling for giving this a lookover and offering encouragement. Any mistakes are my own.

The house had gone back to quiet. Well, not the house, not really. Everyone was still moving around, repairing fences and cars, tending fields and digging graves, but Beth’s mind had gone silent. No music, no thoughts even. No nothing.

 

All she wanted to do was scream.

 

Maggie was off with her boy, Patricia was robotically going through the motions of running the farm, Daddy was nowhere to be found, there were strangers all over her house and Beth had nothing. 

 

The night after they laid Mom and Shawn in the ground (and it seemed that everybody was too afraid or too ashamed to call it what it was, a mass grave), Beth snuck into Jimmy’s room and took off her tee shirt. She climbed on top of him and started kissing him, and he gently pushed her aside, saying that she didn’t know what she was doing, and he wouldn’t take advantage of her. Beth got dressed and left his room. (She didn’t know it then, but that would be the last time she would ever kiss Jimmy.)

 

One day, she woke up in her father’s bed. Lori, that dark-haired woman with real tired eyes, Carl’s mama, was sitting next to her, watching, concerned. Maggie had told her that Lori was pregnant. As the room came into focus, Beth felt white-hot hate for that tiny, unborn baby. Why did it get to have a mother when she had to lose two perfectly good ones?

 

There was a blur of time in which Beth couldn’t remember much- even later, even when she forced herself to think on those days, but later on, she would always remember seeing the blood run red and angry from her wrist and the throbbing pain that accompanied it and the way that made her feel. In that moment, she wanted more pain, more blood, any and all reminders that she was alive. She got it in Maggie’s eyes- horror and fear. She wasn’t slipping away. She was still here. She had a choice.

 

She slept for a long time, and when she woke up, it was dark, and her daddy was there. “Hey Bethy,” he whispered, eyes bright and alert. She reached out a hand for him and saw that her wrist was neatly bandaged. Patricia’s stitches weren’t so meticulous. The bedsheets were clean, and so was her nightgown. She felt so taken care of in that moment, it almost made her sick. 

 

“Daddy, I’m sorry…” she started to cry.

 

“Shh, shhh, none of that now,” Her daddy looked old. He’d had white hair as long as she could remember. But he was an old man now, overnight. Beth felt like it had been years since she’d seen him.

 

“Where’d you go, Daddy?” She worried the sheets between her fingers.

 

Hershel grimaced, ashamed. “Not gonna leave you again, Doodlebug.”

 

Then there were more deaths. That kind old man Dale, and Patricia was ripped straight out of her hand. Three mothers. Lori nearly ripped Beth’s arm out of its socket before the walker who had Patricia could gnaw its way up to Beth. She threw her in the truck waiting with T-Dog.

 

Her daddy hadn’t left the farm. Beth saw him, standing on his own with an old shotgun against hundreds of walkers, coming up over the rise of their fields.

 

Beth screamed as T-Dog screeched the truck away from the farm- her whole life, Mama’s grave, Mom and Shawn barely cold in the ground, Patricia torn to bits, Maggie who knows where, her daddy and his shotgun. “Let me back, let me go back!”

 

“No baby girl, there’s no going back there,” Lori put her arms around her, partially to keep her still, but she held her firm, tucked Beth’s head into her shoulder, and Beth could feel cool, dry lips brush her brow and a barely audible murmur, _s’okay, I got you._

 

No. No more mothers.

 

Beth didn’t remember falling asleep, but when she woke up, her head was on Lori’s shoulder, and she was absent-mindedly pushing her blond hair back. It was daylight. Beth couldn't believe the sun would shine after a night like that.

 

They found Daryl and Carol first- they'd been out in the open all night, on his motorcycle. Nobody stopped, Daryl and T-Dog just nodded to each other and Lori breathed out a harsh _thank God_ as the tiniest bit of hope grew in her eyes. They followed each other off to the highway, and Beth screamed when she saw Maggie's SUV. She waved at her sister through the window, both of them were crying.

 

When they got out to the freeway, and the three figures came into focus - two men and a boy - Beth sagged against Lori. She ran straight into her daddy's arms and sobbed as he held her. "Not gonna leave you again."

 

*

 

Daryl looked down at the ground, at the spot his body had made an imprint after so many days of laying in the mud, and then back to the walker, ambling down the long, empty road. It had been dead a while, it was more skeleton in some parts than it was flesh and blood. 

 

_Daryl, go back. You should go back._

 

He closed his eyes and let that voice wash over him. Sweet laughter rushed through him and then was carried off with the wind. He felt cold breeze hit him behind the neck and his eyes flew open, futilely searching the sky for something, anything, straining to hear that voice again. He touched his hand to the ground. " _Please_."

 

And then he heard her again, singing, off in the distance, getting further away.

 

Daryl didn't think. He hefted his crossbow and fired, muscle memory taking over and the walker was down with a clean shot, finally within grabbing distance. He pulled his arrow out and, with a glance back to the cold hole in the ground, followed that sweet voice.

 

_Go back. Find me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might be a bit before the next update. I have to buckle down for Yuletide, but I'm very excited for the next part- the winter between the farm and the prison, lots of juicy stuff for me to dive into with Beth. And Daryl's moving now, so there's something. :)
> 
> Many thanks again for all of your support!


	4. Faded From The Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks again to kadie_darling, for giving this a first glance. All mistakes are mine!

Beth had always known loss. Her childhood was happy and loving, plenty of kisses and hugs and always knowing the safety of her daddy’s arms. But still, she always held her first really important memory of her mama, laying like a beautiful sleeping princess in her deathbed. It shaped her. 

 

“Do you want to talk about Jimmy?” Maggie gently asked one night when Beth had walked in on her and Glenn trying to steal a private moment in the woods (there was no privacy with ten of them trying to sleep in two cars).

 

Beth thought of Jimmy- sweet and handsome, too young to die. But there wasn’t just Jimmy, there was Patricia and Otis, and Shawn and Mom, and always their mama. 

 

“No.”

 

Beth had always known loss. Hunger was something new. And hunger took up the vast majority of her thoughts in those days.

 

Every day required forward motion. Find food, find water, find shelter, find weapons, find ammunition, find fuel for the cars, find batteries, find warmer clothing, find medical supplies, hide from walkers, run from walkers, keep running, don't make any noise, don't scream. Find food. There was never enough food to go around, and she was always hungry.

 

And then when there was food, no one could exactly stuff their face. Everyone always tried to offer Lori a little extra, and she tried to give it over to Carl. He would slam away from his mother, sometimes muttering something about not being a kid.

 

Beth slept in the SUV, in the passenger seat, Lori slept across the middle seat with Carol behind the wheel and Maggie and Glenn slept in the hatchback. The other men and boy slept in the truck, Hershel and Carl going top to tail in the cab and Rick, T-Dog and Daryl side by side in the truck bed. Once in a while, they found a house to stop for a night or two (never more than two). But it was such a process to board it up, sometimes there was nothing to board it up with, that they usually didn’t bother. 

 

Be quiet. That was the first lesson she learned. 

 

She was wringing out laundry one day, singing out loud. Her dad was sitting on the creek bed nearby, rolling bandages and he'd asked her to sing for him. But it was not one of Daddy's Irish tunes or Mom's hymns, just something she remembered listening to on the radio, in her friend Chelsea's car, on the way home from school. It wasn't one of the songs that she'd listen to in her room alone, on vinyl, it was some catchy pop song that just wormed it's way under her skin, and was stuck in her head that day.

 

Beth and Hershel both jumped a mile in the air when they heard twigs breaking coming through the trees. She settled back down when she saw Daryl's crossbow, followed by the man himself and Rick. She tried for a friendly smile. It was a strange family that they all had made. She couldn’t say she really _liked_ any of them, or knew much about any of them. But still. They were all always counting to ten- don’t leave anyone behind.

 

But neither of them smiled back. “Beth, we could hear you, coming for about ten minutes there,” Rick said gently, but there was a disapproving cast in his eye. “You know how it is- we got to keep quiet.”

 

“Sorry,” she muttered. She felt about ten years old.

 

“I asked her to sing for me,” Hershel called out, gruffly trying to take the blame.

 

“Sorry,” Beth muttered again, and looked at her dad over her shoulder. She was so sorry in that moment that she’d been singing some stupid pop song that she couldn’t even remember who recorded it, instead of ‘Danny Boy’, one last time for him.

 

Daryl looked at her, and Beth found herself flinching under his glare. He was not a happy man, not friendly like Glenn or even polite like Carol and Lori. “You ain’t got no weapon,” he spat.

 

“I got my gun, right by my side,” Hershel had hefted himself up on creeking knees and made his way over to the group. 

 

“You was twenty, thirty yards away,” Daryl argued and looked back at Beth. If Rick had made her feel ten, she felt five now. Daddy always stayed close to her, and when they did come upon walkers, even Maggie joined in without hesitation now, but Daddy would always pull Beth back. 

 

“Even Carl always carries a knife on him,” Rick interjected, and that really put Beth over the edge into a full-on, true-blonde blush.

 

Daryl snorted and slung his crossbow over his shoulder, and then to her surprise, started to unbuckle his belt. She saw that it holstered a ten-inch hunting knife. He held it out to her. “Take it.”

 

She looked back at her dad, and he looked almost ashamed. “Don’t you need it?”

 

“I’ll find another.” 

 

“Thanks,” she whispered, winding the long belt twice around her hips. 

 

He hitched up his own pants, sagging low now. “I’ll find you a smaller belt too.” And two days later, he did, trading her for his old one. Beth always kept her knife on her after that, slept with her fingers around the handle. 

 

Even so, she didn’t sleep much. Carol was usually crying (softly, quietly) next to her. “What was she like? Your daughter?” Beth whispered one night. Glenn was snoring softly from the back.

 

Carol looked over, swiping one hand over her tears. “She was sweet. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body. And I was too weak to protect her.” 

 

Beth looked at her, trying to figure her age. She looked like she had lived through lifetimes of pain, but her eyes were pretty and she was thin and strong. “Daddy tried to protect my mom. And my big brother. I don’t think it was his fault that...that they’re gone.”

 

Carol nodded but didn’t accept any absolution. Beth turned back towards her own window and tried to hum to herself, very softly so as to not make any noise. _Yet in my dreams, I’d be nearer…_

 

Lori cried at night time too. Beth saw her struggle every day, with her growing belly, with trying to keep up with the rest of the group, pale from hunger and exhaustion. Rick checked on her periodically throughout every day, a curt _you all right?_ , and always came straight to her with any food he’d found, but he never slept next to her at night. Maggie and Glenn were inseparable, only weeks after they’d met. Lori’s loneliness looked terrifying to Beth.

 

Beth clumsily learned how to wield her knife. She ran away from her father, screaming after her the first time they came upon a small herd after Daryl gave her his knife and just started stabbing at any flesh she saw. “The _brain_ , it has to be the brain!” T-Dog shouted to her when she first got the blade stuck in a shoulder. 

 

As the weather got colder, Hershel watched everyone closely for signs of illness. Glenn got a strain of strep throat that probably wouldn’t have even kept him out of work in the old world, but with no medicine for him, he grew wheezy and weak, difficult for him to breathe. Carl started to feel sick also, and it struck Beth how much he’d changed from the little bloody boy cradled in his father’s arms. He followed his father around like a shadow, always pulling away from his mother if she tried to straighten his coat or brush the hair from his forehead. But he laid quietly with his head in her lap, too weak to protest.

 

It seemed they were dropping like flies. T-Dog was nursing a sprained wrist and that left him out of commission to drive the truck. Rick and Lori refused to leave Carl’s side, and Maggie held Glenn close. He just wasn’t getting better. Daddy was running back and forth between both cars, doing what he could- which mostly amounted to making sure that they all had water. 

 

“We got to find a place to hole up for a couple of days, so they can really _rest_ ,” Beth was standing next to her dad trying to talk to Carol, and she could hear the ragged edge to his voice. He was going to drop too if he didn’t get some rest.

 

“We can’t stop out in the middle of nowhere,” Carol said, waving her arms around her at the endless trees and encroaching darkness. 

 

“We’ve got to find somewhere,” Beth called in. She looked back to the SUV, Lori and Rick finally united for once as they spoke to their son in gentle tones. 

 

“Yeah, we’ve got to move,” Daryl’s voice was gruff behind her, and Beth hadn’t realized he’d been there. Her back stiffened at his voice, but she didn’t turn around. “We’ve got a few hours left before it’s total dark. We’re bound to come up on a house, something. Better than just waiting out in the open.”

 

“All right well…” Carol shrugged. “I guess I’ll drive the SUV, so Rick and Lori can sit with Carl. Hershel, you gonna come with us?”

 

“Yeah, I better,” he answered. “I want to stick close to Lori, make sure she’s okay.” 

 

Maggie was already situating herself behind the driver’s seat of the truck, with Glenn slumped on her and T-Dog wincing in pain next to him.

 

“Bethy, you mind riding in the hatchback?” Her dad asked. She felt so completely and utterly in the way.

 

“She can ride with me.”

 

His voice startled her again, and Beth finally turned to look at him. But Daryl was addressing her dad, not her. Hershel glanced at her and then nodded. Giving his permission.

 

Wordlessly, Beth followed him to the Triumph. It was a small thing, but she hated how this man and her father made this decision for her. Still, there was nothing she could really say when there were sick people and her only problem was that she never had anything to say to Daryl. She hadn’t really been alone with any of them, without her dad or sister, except for that night, running away from the farm with Lori and T-Dog. She slung one leg over the seat behind him, and it pressed her up against him, almost too close to breathe. “Back up,” he warned her, tensing forward, away from her touch. “I can’t steer like that. Hold onto the bars under the seat.” It felt awkward and forced her to sit up unnaturally straight. Before he kicked the bike on, he turned over his shoulder, eying her for a long time. She wished he would say something instead of just always shooting her them glares and lumping her in as one of the children to take care of.

 

“You’re gonna be cold,” he finally said. Nothing nice about his voice. He could have been talking to a fly, for all he ever seemed to bother. He stripped off his leather vest and jean jacket, and handed her the latter, before putting his vest back over his flannel. 

 

“Don’t you need it?” The second time she’d asked him that, she realized.

 

“I be all right. Hold on tight. Don’t fall asleep.” He turned around, and she guessed that was that. She slung the much-too-large jacket around her shoulders and gripped the handle bars beneath her before the Triumph took off, and she heard nothing else but the wind.

 

*

 

Daryl had walked for a full night and day. After sitting on the ground for so long, his muscles ached in a pleasant way as he stretched them out.

 

She had told him to find her. 

And he would follow her anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, some Beth/Daryl interaction! It's definitely not going to be all sunshine and roses! This chapter's title is from the Iron & Wine song of the same name.


End file.
